Month: January 2008

wireless networking

My Airport Express started flaking out earlier this week, so I decided to hook up a WRT54G that I had originally bought for my father, but never got around to installing for him. That went pretty smooth, and seems to be working fine. One nice plus to this is that I now have one box acting as my router and WAP, instead of the separate Linksys Router and Apple Airport Express that I used to have.

I decided to take the plunge and switch from WEP to WPA now too. Everything I have works with WPA+TKIP, except for my TiVo. I’m going to have to order a new USB network adapter to get that to work. It’s only $40 though, so I might as well. It looks like I can’t do WPA2, though, since my Sony PSP doesn’t do WPA2. Oh, and I realized that I now have six devices hooked up wirelessly: a MacBook, a Dell Inspiron, an iPod Touch, a TiVo, a PSP, and a Wii.

One more funny thing: I can now pick up 22 different wireless access points in my apartment. The airspace in here is getting mighty crowded! When I first hooked up my original Airport base station several years ago, there were no other WAPs broadcasting around here at all.

San Diego hotels

Comic-Con has started a blog on “Staying in San Diego.” Hotel reservations open up next week. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes. They haven’t even posted the list of con hotels and rates yet, so I have no clue how many hotels they’ve got deals with this year, or what the rates are. Their initial post in this blog even encourages you to try booking a hotel outside of the official con block, since that’ll obviously sell out quickly.

I’ve been scouting alternatives myself, and I haven’t come up with much. There are few downtown hotels you can book through normal channels, but they’re all $300+ a night. There are a couple of hotels in Mission Valley that can be had for under $200, but that’s a bit of a haul to get back and forth to the convention center every day. I think it can be done via the trolley, but I’m not sure about the logistics on that. One of the hotels I was looking at is across the highway from a trolley stop, but it’s hard to tell if there’s any way for a pedestrian to get across the highway.

Well, I guess I’ll try getting a room in the official block, and if that doesn’t work out, maybe I’ll consider skipping the con this year. The way the economy is headed, maybe that’s not a bad idea anyway.

Meanwhile, WonderCon is just a few weeks away!

random anime stuff

I watched the last two DVD volumes (V6 and V7) of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2nd Gig) yesterday. I’d watched the earlier episodes on Cartoon Network a year or so back, but somehow I missed the last 5 or 6 episodes, so I picked up the DVDs. This is a pretty dense series. The episodes on V6, in particular, have a whole lot of exposition going on. The action ramps up in V7, and the series does indeed end with a bang, but there’s quite a lot going on beneath the surface.

One nice extra on the DVDs that was cut out of the CN showings is “Tachikomatic Days,” a bunch of funny little shorts that are stuck at the end of each episode. They’re almost funny enough to make me want to pick up the earlier DVDs just for these bits. (Maybe if I see the DVDs on sale cheap at some point.)

There seems to be a movie out that’s basically cut together from the 2nd Gig series. This guy has a review up, as does DVD Verdict. I’ll have to watch for this, if it shows up on CN or maybe Starz, though it sounds like it doesn’t contain anything that isn’t already in the series.

There’s a bit of a preview of the new PiQ magazine here. I mentioned this a little while ago — Newtype USA is basically being relaunched as “PiQ.” It sounds like it will be a more general “geek culture” magazine, with a smaller size and page count than Newtype, and a lower price. (And no bundled DVDs. Darn.) There’s one sentence in this preview that makes me a bit pessimistic about PiQ: “Essentially, the otherworldy Japanese ‘object’ that was Newtype USA is gone, to be replaced by something that very-much resembles Wizard in size… and in tone.” Um, that doesn’t sound good.

Right Stuf is having a blowout sale on ADV DVDs. They did this with Geneon a little over a year ago, and I would up buying a bunch of DVDs. I think I can manage to avoid buying 25 ADV DVDs. Most of the stuff from them that I like, I already have. I might go with the 10 for $50 deal though. There are a few things I wouldn’t mind paying $5 each for…

Giants Stun Packers and Head to the Super Bowl

It’s hard to believe that the Giants are actually going to the Super Bowl this year. In some ways, though, this is typical Giants luck: the one year they actually make it, they’re going to be up against possibly the best team in football history. Oh well, at least they made it this far!

too many comics

I just cross-filed the last two months worth of my Westfield shipments into my “to be read” pile. I’m embarrassed to say that, if I were to make one big pile of comics I’m waiting to read, that pile would be three and a half feet tall. (I’ve actually got all this filed into a foot-long box, a two-foot pile, and a six-inch pile. A 3.5 ft pile would be kind of dangerous.) I’m gradually cutting back on my Westfield orders. I’ve got 21 books total on this month’s order, which is a bit less than what I was getting a year ago (28 books on my January 07 order), for instance. And I’m pretty sure I’m not signing up for any weekly books after Countdown is finished, though I don’t know if DC is planning a new weekly book anyway. Either way, that’ll knock 4 books a month off the total.

Meanwhile, I picked up four trades at Waldenbooks today, since the store in the Bridgewater Commons is closing (as, apparently, are most Waldenbooks) and they had everything on sale for 40% off. I’ve got a pretty big stack of trades to read through too, so I didn’t really need four more, but hey, 40% off is pretty good, right? I picked up Black Dossier, which looks to be pretty deep and fairly strange, just judging it based on a quick look. And I picked up Buffy Omnibus 1 and the season eight Long Way Home trade. Mind you, I haven’t actually watched the season 7 DVDs, so I won’t bother reading the season 8 stuff until after I’ve done that, which probably won’t be for another year or two.

The fourth book I picked up was the first Moon Knight trade from the Charlie Huston run. I’ve been curious about that, but just hadn’t gotten around to picking it up. (I was a big fan of Doug Moench’s run on Moon Knight from back in the eighties.)

So, to sum up, I still have quite a lot of comics and graphic novels to read! I think I need to be careful about what I buy at WonderCon next month.

MacHeist and other Mac stuff

Well, after deciding not to buy this year’s MacHeist, I changed my mind and gave them my $49 today. They’ve added enough stuff to the bundle to make it worthwhile for me. Even if I don’t use anything else I’ll probably get my money’s worth out of the two games they added.

And I gave Apple $20 for the new iPod Touch apps. The Touch still isn’t where I think it should be, in terms of functionality, but I’m hoping third-party software will fill the remaining holes after the API comes out next month. If I could just get contact, calendar, and note-taking apps that all sync back to my computer, and can be updated on either the Touch or the MacBook, I’ll be happy. I’m basically just looking for the same stuff I’ve got on my Palm.

WSJ.com – Commentary: Me, Myself and I

“For all the rhetorical flourish on display, many of the presidential candidates still don’t have a grip on the King’s English. That great American personal pronoun, the first person singular, which adorns nearly every sentence of candidate discourse, is still too slippery for many of this year’s White House aspirants.” – from the WSJ.

Chris Dodd?

I took this online quiz, and apparently, the presidential candidate most in tune with my opinions is Chris Dodd. That was kind of surprising, since I don’t think I’d ever even heard of him, and kind of disappointing, since he seems to have dropped out of the race already.

The second guy on my list is Dennis Kucinich, which isn’t all that surprising. I don’t really think he’s likely to win the nomination, though, and I haven’t really been following his campaign.

Of course, the quiz wasn’t terribly granular, and I can’t say that the multiple-choice options always provided an option that matched up with my sometimes convoluted and contrary opinions.

(The guy I’m least in tune with is Mike Huckabee, which isn’t terribly surprising.)

Newtype USA to be replaced by PiQ magazine in March

I let my subscription to Newtype expire about a year ago, but that was just because I was falling so far behind with my reading. It was a pretty cool magazine, with some great graphics. And I liked the job Gary Steinman was doing as editor. I can’t say that I always trusted the reviews, but the magazine wasn’t merely an ADV house organ or anything like that. Hopefully the replacement magazine they mention will be as good as Newtype!

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